You find this guy to be "brilliant"? I only skimmed the article, but it's just the same old, tired, ignorant anti-EV talking points I see from Luddites and oil industry shills every time I come across some kind of anti-EV rant. This article is just better written, but it's the same crap. If I were being extremely generous, I would just say that it's obviously not written by an engineer or anyone who really understands both cars and electric power generation and transmission.
The Problem with Electric Vehicles
61–70 of 205 posts
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#62These are relatively minor problems however. The gas station problem for example is solved by charging your car at home or work. Gas stations exist because we can't refuel our cars at home.
What about people who park curbside? Will their cars be spending 2 hours/night at the charging station?
To all the people replying "curb chargers", how much do you think it would cost to equip tens of thousands of street parking spaces (per town) with them?
I don't see that happening any time soon, and if it does the huge capital expenditure will have to be passed down to the consumers, reducing the economic attractiveness of electrical.
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#63I have an electric car, a leaf. I also have solar power from Solar City. I live in sunny MA, where in the winter we average 15kWh generated to the summer we average 50kWh. My commute is 60 miles per day which is around 6-8kW depending in traffic and weather. Also, my local power is a mixture of nuclear and wind. So. Can we please stop rolling coal burning power plants into the electric car equation as if it is univer…
I live in an apartment there is no way to plug in a car or build a solar panel. Basically without a means of owning an outlet no plugin hybrid is possible.
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#64Most of the problems listed in this article are, in my opinion, only temporary and would be solved if the technology becomes widespread. As in many technological shifts, what is required is either 1) evolved technology or 2) demand (which would trigger more technological improvements). I remember a similar discussion about SSDs some time ago: they were slow and expensive and a few commentators were quite skeptical about their widespread adoption.
Problem 1: Transportation will load the grid and generating capacity in rather nasty ways
But not in specific times of the day, as A/C does. Granted, we're talking about much more power.
Problem 2: Rapid charging is actually not so rapid [...]
Yet.
Problem 4: Re-charging will not work nearly as well when vehicle utilization goes up due to sharing
If sharing makes usage of a vehicle go up to ~100%, it will only be a matter of having a few more vehicles. If a vehicle spends even 10% of its time recharging, we'll just need ~10% more shared vehicles. This only drives up production by 10%.
Problem 5: We don’t actually have all this infrastructure yet
Yet. The technology won't be too convenient for the next few years.
Problem 6: Range
That would make adoption easier in more densely populated regions.
Problem 7: Trailers
That's a problem for a small percentage of the population (at least here in Europe).
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chevy Volt goes a step further and has the gas powered engine hooked up to the wheels. I prefer the approach taken by the BMW i3 where the (optional) gas powered range-extender is purely used to generate electricity, but there's room for both in the transition period and PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) seems like it might be an important market segment.
The Chevy Volt and BMW i3 are identical in the regard of the function of their petrol engine. The Volt is using Chevy's Voltec drivetrain, so there's no way for the engine to put power to the wheels except through charging the battery - the same as the i3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_Voltec_powertrain
Yes, this was the explanation I saw when my Girlfriend purchased a used volt last summer. We explain it to most people that the gas engine is there to act as a generator and charge the battery and act as a generator. Not to directly power the car. She loves her car.
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#66I really hate the long tailpipe argument every time it comes up. Here in WA state the large majority comes from Hydro so an EV is much greener than traditional forms of transportation.
Also, adding new emission controls at the power plant automatically upgrades the entire electric vehicle fleet.
EVs will be very good for places with wind power as they can easily tailor the load to what is being produced so you don't have any more cases where the price of electricity goes negative.
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#67Hmm. All problems that could have been set at the door of internal combustion when it was new. They'll be solved as EVs make up a larger percentage of what's on the road. Are EVs the endgame? I suspect not. Apart from anything else I think it's going to prove far, far harder to replace trucks than buses and cars with EVs. Would we be better investing in public transport that's convenient and reliable enough people wa…
I think it's going to prove far, far harder to replace trucks than buses and cars with EVs
The economics don't stack up today for long-distance EV trucking, but it's quite possible that they will in a decade or so, with ongoing incremental improvements in battery costs and energy density.
The limitations now are cost and infrastructure, not technology. If we imagine, say, an HGV with a 500kWh battery pack then it should be able to haul a typical load for hundreds of miles between charges. Fast chargers can be installed at existing truck stops.
HGV drivers in Europe are legally required to take rest periods every 4.5 hours (and can drive for a maximum of 9 hours per day), so stopping for charging on a similar schedule would not have much impact on existing work practices.
350kWh packs are already being used today for double-decker busses in London, which can run all day without recharging. So 500kWh (or more?) packs in HGVs are not unrealistic.
The only exceptional case I can think of is extreme long-haul trucking in remote, off-grid locations (think Australian Outback, or Ice Road Truckers). Those may be the last hold-outs for fossil fuelled vehicles.
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#68I want to quickly point out that these appear to be short-term problems, and have been addressed by Elon Musk many times. The manufacturing of EVs is, right now, not a clean process, but this is planned to be remedied by self-sustaining factories with solar and storage.
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
$5000 of solar panels in the office parking lot and you get almost 0 draw from the grid for the commute. I guess that doesn't compare favorably to $600 (~200*$3) per year for fuel, but it isn't real far out either.
Solar installations will double every two years (globally), so let's hope that will be enough to keep up with EV growth. I still think the bigger bottleneck will be the installation of chargers, though, even though it shouldn't be because they aren't that expensive. But Tesla is just one small car maker installing its own, and the other manufacturers don't seem all that interested in building them for the same reason…
I think the real issue is that the 1 charge range is not yet all that attractive, especially given the cost of the vehicles. As range goes up and price comes down, demand for chargers will increase (that demand can be coming from people who'd like to buy an electric, it doesn't have to be owners).
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#70Can somebody explain how are EV, and especially Tesla, batteries different from, say, my laptop batteries, which normally degrade to the point of being unusable within 4-5 years, and have to be replaced?
EV batteries are treated much better than the batteries in your laptop.
First, EV batteries typically have active thermal management. Heat kills lithium ion batteries. When you charge your laptop, the battery gets hot, and this accelerates degradation. When you charge your car, the cooling system engages and keeps the battery at the optimal temperature. (The LEAF doesn't have an active cooling system for its battery. It also suffers much worse battery degradation than other EVs. Coincidence?)
Second, EV batteries are somewhat de-rated from their full capacity. Lithium ion batteries don't like spending time at the ends of their capacity. They want to live in the middle, not be fully charged or fully discharged. Laptop and phone makers tend to view their products as short-lived, disposable items, so they'll optimize for maximum running time on the battery by charging to 100% and draining to 0%, at the cost of battery longevity. A car will wall off some of the capacity so that when you're at 100%, you're really at, say, 90%, and when you're at 0% you're really at, say, 10%. At least some of these cars take it further and let you limit the maximum charge so you only use what you need. For example, I normally charge my Tesla to 90%, which is all I need for 99% of my driving. When I need that last little bit, I can charge it all the way to 100%.
Third, a large portion of degradation comes from the number of actual cycles you use, and deeper cycles are worse. A typical battery might last 300 100%-0% cycles before it degrades beyond usability. If you only use 50% of the capacity each time, then it might last 800 cycles. (Very rough number, totally pulled out of my nether regions, but you get the idea.) Long-range EVs are typically not driven to the limits of their range every day, so the batteries are treated well. Most days, my car might go from 90% to 80%, then get charged back to 90%. My phone, by comparison, goes from 100% to around 20% and back to 100% each day, which degrades the battery far more.